In hopes that spring will be upon us soon, I joined the mailing list for the Indianapolis Ultimate Association. I’m hoping to get a few pickup games in at the very least, and maybe even join the summer league. Fun times in the big city.

Like the weather outside, and my feeling of general heathiness at the moment, I rate today as a resounding “Bleck!” on the day-ratings scale. It’s one of those days where I don’t really feel like posting at all, but am going to anyway, just to keep the blogdog fed.

I’ve been feeling really off today. I’m blaming my sinuses (sinii?) for the ordeal, as much because they can’t offer any sort of coherent retort as out of any sense of real guilt on their part. They are quite stuffed, and have led to a real inability to think today, let alone get much done. Worse, they’ve been making me feel slightly dizzy all day. Super blah.

Anyway, it’s not like I’m in a bad mood or anything. I feel fine inside my brain. The body just isn’t cooperating with the general mood memo that my mind is sending out. I suppose it’s kind of like my body is going on strike, crying out against the foul treatment that it generally gets. “More heathful food!” yell some parts of me. “More excercise!” yell other parts. “More cowbell!” inflect yet other parts. You get the picture.

I’ll post more if and when my body decides to get with the program, and get down to some good old collective bargaining.

The Surgeon General warns that this post provides more than 170% of your daily required incoherence. Repeated consumption of this post could lead to feelings of self-doubt, loathing, or food cravings. This post caused nausea in approxiamtely equal numbers of our test group as the placebo post did. Readers who experience dramatic weight loss should discontinue reading immediately. As with any blog post, consulting your physician before consumption will only yield quizzicle questions such as “what’s a blog” or “couldn’t you get fired for that?”.

I added two links in the People We’ve Never Met category. First off is Dooce, who is a great read. I first ran into her blog because she’s one of the high-profile bloggers-who-have-been-fired-for-blog-content. Now that’s never happened to me, mind you, but I could certainly empathize with someone who has had that happen. She doesn’t blog a whole lot about that anymore though. She’s an aethist in Utah, ex-webdesigner, mother of a small child. She’s an excellent writer. I’ve linked her before, but now it’s official, she’s a keeper. (:

The second is Kentucky Fried Adventures. It’s written by a woman who I get the impression is still in her twenties, is a lawyer, comes from kentucky, is vaguely god-fearing but mostly aetheist and has a hilarious outlook on life. As to her content, I must warn you that she can and does peg the crude-o-meter. You’ve been warned. That being said, I recommend each of these two blogs heartily. They’re amusing reads. As always, either one or both of them could be pure fiction. You never can tell. It’s amusing either way though.

One last link for the day (unless I find another :): Hanzi Smatter is a blog about asian characters being used incorrectly, especially in tattoos. I’ve always gotten a kick out of people who otherwise have nothing to do with asian culture getting these things put on themselves, permanently. It’s a fun, quick read.

Each of today’s links is via Boing Boing a blog that before today, I had only heard about. Silly me. What have I been missing out on?

Senior year, Nate (and possibly myself… I remember being involved somehow, but I’m not sure how) did some proof-of-concept work regarding hashing algorithms and large data sets (namely Nate’s mp3 collection). He/We found that SHA-1 hiccupped several times, giving the same hash for different files. I think we left it at that.

It turns out that we were absolutely right, and that SHA-1 not only collides, it collides predictably. Thus, it’s pointless for use in digital signatures and the like. Granted, we didn’t take it this far, but it’s still nice to know that we were indeed barking up the right tree.

I just wanted to let y’all know about a short story called “I, Robot” that I read recently. It’s quite well done, and it’s a marvelous take on Asimov’s Robotic treatises. If you’re a fan of Sci-Fi, or even if you’ve just seen the movie, give it a read sometime when you’ve downtime. It’s worth it.

I went rollerskating at a rink with Melissa and my sister, and some of my sister’s friends. It was fun. There were quite a few children hovering right around the three-foot-tall mark though. I don’t have anything against such beasties, but let me tell you, it really makes you question reality when passel of seven year olds are virtually yelling “She, shook me all. night. long.” along with Aerosmith. Very surreal. Knocking them out with those American thighs indeed.

This post was going to be a somewhat snarky and humorous attempt to explain some of the behaviour of women… But halfway through I got lazy and decided to re-dedicate this post to all those millions of roses who were brought to an untimely end today.

Melissa and I have both been reading through the Symphony of Ages series by Elizabeth Haydon. It’s a work of fantasy, her first books ever published, and quite well done. I would recommend it to those out there who like the Wheel of Time/Sword of Truth/Sword of Shannara sort of thing, but are looking for a new twist or five.

Without giving anything away, I do want to say that this series is the first I’ve ever read that has had a really good explanantion for why a bard is a powerful person, and how their power works.